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Barbara Yaffe: Ottawa rightly targeting EI fraud

Both the federal NDP and Liberals criticized Human Resources Minister Diane Finley for misleading the Commons last month when asked whether Ottawa sets dollar quotas for investigators to recoup.

Photograph by: Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press/Files
, Postmedia News

Whether you call them integrity officers or pogey police, they are doing legitimate work and, appropriately, are being defended by the Harper government.

For anyone unfamiliar with the ongoing Employment Insurance controversy, a bit of background:

Since January, some 1,200 Service Canada employees have been visiting homes of EI recipients across Canada, checking on program eligibility and ferreting out fraud.

The surprise visits are part of an effort to tighten up the $17-billion program (down from $19 billion a few years ago), financed through premiums paid by employers and employees.

The government announced last May it would restrict eligibility to those doing “reasonable job searches,” willing to accept “suitable employment.”

Accordingly, Ottawa expects claimants to be ready to commute an hour or more to work, and accept jobs paying less than their previous income. Provisions are stricter for repeat claimants.

Ottawa also expects claimants to attend job fairs and liaise with a new federal job-matching program.

Predictably, official Opposition New Democrats and the Liberals oppose such initiatives and last week in the Commons howled their outrage about the home visits, calling them excessive and intimidating.

It is worth noting that the bulk of EI claimants reside in Atlantic Canada and Quebec, where most seasonal work goes on. This also is where New Democrats and Liberals predominate.

The two parties also criticized Human Resources Minister Diane Finley for misleading the Commons last month when asked whether Ottawa sets dollar quotas for investigators to recoup.

Finley denied this, playing foolish semantics. She later admitted investigators do have annual “performance targets,” with each investigator trying to recoup $437,000 in fraudulent claims.

Last year, according to Human Resources, integrity officers found $128.7 million in fraudulent EI claims. In addition, they identified $330 million in EI overpayments the department is now trying to recoup.

That reflects a whole lot of cheating — not a surprise, human nature being what it is.

As Finley put it: “If the Opposition prevents us from rooting out the hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and ineligible claims that exist in the EI system, it’s Canadians who play by the rules who will lose.” That is because any EI surpluses would be deployed to reduce premiums.

But Finley herself has something to answer for: She allowed the Canada EI Financing Board, with an annual budget of $3.3 million, to operate for four years.

Its operations were suspended only after the CBC reported in early 2012 that the fully staffed and outfitted Crown corporation had no work to do in the absence of EI surpluses to reinvest.

Certainly, the EI home visits can be debated — they could endanger investigators who already have authority to compel office visits.

But the diligent attempt to ferret out abuse is justified. And honest claimants shouldn’t mind vigorous probing if they have nothing to hide.

Truth is, some seasonal workers have come to feel entitled to just spend winters on EI. And their MPs feel a political compulsion to defend the entitlement.

But it is high time that deeply indebted governments ran tighter shops.

I have noticed the Canada Revenue Agency has become more aggressive in its tax collection. Twice last year, I was reassessed, once erroneously when, as an executor, I had to prove the CRA was wrongly soliciting taxes relating to my late mother’s RRIF.

Without production of a four-year-old credit union record, which fortunately I had kept in a dust-laden file, the CRA intended to bill me $20,000.

It is a tougher, meaner world out there. Governments are stretched for revenue. EI recipients are not exempt from increased scrutiny.

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